Joel Williamson, Lineberger Professor Emeritus of the Humanities at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is the author of a number of landmark works on Southern culture, including William Faulkner and Southern History (OUP, 1993) and The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South since Emancipation (OUP, 1984), which won the Francis Parkman Prize, the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, and the Ralph Emerson Award. Both books were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize.

Ted Ownby is Professor of History and Southern Studies and Director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. He is the author of American Dreams in Mississippi: Consumers, Poverty, and Culture, 1830-1998, among other books.

Donald L. Shaw, who assisted with the final editing, is Kenan Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the author and co-author of numerous titles, including The Emergence of American Political Issues: The Agenda Setting Function of the Press.